On March 17, the New Mexico legislature passed SB 3, which says that candidates for certain offices who are seeking a place on a primary ballot no longer need a petition. The only offices affected are District Judge, District Attorney, State Board of Education, Public Regulation Commission, and Magistrate, all partisan offices. Assuming this bill is signed, candidates seeking a place on a primary ballot for these offices will only need a declaration of candidacy and a modest filing fee.

SB 3 passed because of a decision of the State Supreme Court last year, Sederwall v Herrera. Although the existing New Mexico election law says that primary candidates for these county and district offices need a petition, in practice, they had not been filing petitions, and they had been getting on primary ballots anyway. But an independent candidate for Sheriff of Lincoln County had been barred from the ballot because he had not submitted a general election petition of 3% of the county’s last vote (201 signatures). He had sued and pointed out that his Republican opponent, incumbent Sheriff Rick Virden, had never filed any petition to be on the Republican primary ballot. The Supreme Court had then put both candidates on the ballot. Virden had defeated Sederwall by 73% to 27%.

Now that the legislature has specified that primary candidates for county and some district offices no longer need primary petitions, it may be easier for a qualified minor party to sue over the law that says its convention nominees for those offices must submit petitions.

On November 20, the U.S. Court of Appeals heard arguments in Nader v Democratic National Committee, 08-7074. Ralph Nader had filed the case in 2004, arguing that the Democratic National Committee, and the Kerry-Edwards campaign, had filed 29 lawsuits or administrative complaints to keep Nader off the ballot, not because each of those 29 efforts was individually meritorious, but simply as an insincere means of depleting the Nader campaign’s resources.

The outcome is very difficult to predict. If the panel dismisses the case, it will probably be on Statute of Limitations grounds. However, since no trial has ever been held in this case (since the U.S. District Court had not allowed a trial), it is difficult to establish clearly that Nader has a problem with the statute of limitations. The matter of how the statute of limitations applies in this case depends on knowing certain facts, and those facts cannot be known without a trial.

Only 30 minutes had been scheduled for this hearing. But the judges took up the first 15 minutes of Nader’s attorney’s time asking him about the statute of limitations. Then, they gave him another 28 minutes to answer their questions on other, unrelated parts of the case. By contrast, the attorney for the Democratic National Committee only spoke for 15 minutes.

For the Legal Times Blog report on the hearing, see here. Thanks to Independent Political Report for the link.

The Alaskan Independence Party has decided not to ask for U.S. Supreme Court review in the case over whether the party can prevent a particular voter from running in its primary for public office. The case is called Alaskan Independence Party v State of Alaska, and the 9th circuit had denied the party’s request on October 22, 2008. The case had been filed to prevent Daniel DeNardo from running in its primaries, since he is very hostile to the party and had been suing it for slander.

The party may file a new case in Alaska State Court. The Alaska Constitution gives more Freedom of Association rights to political parties than the U.S. Constitution does. For example, the Alaskan Supreme Court a few years ago ruled that if several qualified political parties want to use a blanket primary ballot in cooperation with each other, the State Constitution protects their ability to do that, even though it contradicted state law. That is why Alaska is the only state that uses a blanket primary. Parties that have participated in the blanket primary have been the Democratic, Alaskan Independence, Libertarian and Green Parties. The Republican Party never wanted to be part of the blanket primary ballot, so it has its own primary ballot.